Amir A.’s Reviews > Rabbit Redux > Status Update
Amir A.
is 70% done
It's not so much that the quality of writing has dipped. It's still classic Updike, which is to say it wraps around you and seeps into the skin. But it feels like the story is paying a price for the author's desire to debate politics. Skeeter's character feels contrived, shoehorned into the narrative to service ulterior motives. It's changed Rabbit, too. Characters typically grow,but Rabbit shedding his stubbornness?
— Sep 14, 2017 11:11AM
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Amir’s Previous Updates
Amir A.
is 85% done
The conclusion of Part 2 is strong enough to redeem its weaker stretches. Harry is back to his libido making his decisions in life, the vector of his movements determined by the angle of his sexual organ like a compass. He's calm, cool, in control, almost indifferent like things that strike him glide smoothly down a sleek exterior shield. It's an important novel again. It wasn't when it tried to be, but now it is.
— Sep 15, 2017 09:21AM
Amir A.
is 50% done
It's good in that there's always a danger of some kind lurking, vague. The narrator doesn't give it a name, it's not the kind of thing that forms beads of sweat on the forehead, but it's there. The reader know Harry; he's a constant. But Janice, Jill, Buchanan et-al, even Nelson and Eccles -- they are variables. Harry isn't ever really in conflict because of his passive nature, but at the same time he's in multiple c
— Sep 13, 2017 11:13AM
Amir A.
is 25% done
Part I done. Maybe it's because having read Rabbit Run I already know Harry so well, or maybe it's because Updike has constructed the narrative better in this novel; either way, there are none of the why-am-I-reading-this doubts that attended the first half of Rabbit Run. It's solid writing, solid story-telling. Nelson is the big variable, as if in his ostensibly secondary importance he might be the key character.
— Sep 11, 2017 09:05AM
Amir A.
is 15% done
Updike is brilliant. This is easier to get into than Rabbit Run -- the conflict is established right at the start. All the elements of the prose that made me smile and appreciate Updike's incisive insight in the first Rabbit novel are here again. But this is more political, some might say offensively so. And whereas Rabbit Run pretty much only drew us into Harry's mind, it looks like Janice will be a major focus now.
— Sep 10, 2017 08:39AM
